Many people don’t know the difference between thanking and praising. Ask them to praise God and they will begin to recite all the things they are grateful for. Essentially they are focusing on all God has done for them. The focus is on them, not on God. But praise focuses on God, not us.

It was wrong and I knew it, but I couldn’t seem to stop envying a church planter in my area whose church seemed far more successful. In fact, every Sunday I had to drive past his church to get to my temporary facility, and when I drove by my thoughts were along the lines, “Why does he seem to have so much more success, Lord? It’s not fair. He has a nice facility; I have a temporary facility. He has a big crowd; I have a little huddle.”

One very hot Saturday in August 1997 I went running. I ran hard and when I got to my street, a neighbor lady looked at me and quipped, “You look like you’re having a heart attack.” I thought she was just joking, but she wasn’t too far from the truth.

Carolyn and I are completing the process of building a new home and moving in. We have had to make tons of small, medium and large decisions—decisions about design, costs, contractors, appliances, furnishings, landscaping, what to keep, what to let go of, and on and on.Our decisioning muscles have been maxed out!